


Break in the Waves

by LamiaCalls



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Gen, Overworking, light emotional hurt/comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:54:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28099506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LamiaCalls/pseuds/LamiaCalls
Summary: Riz blames himself, and himself alone, for enraging the Night Yorb. Fabian won't let him get away with that.
Relationships: Riz Gukgak & Fabian Aramais Seacaster
Comments: 10
Kudos: 36
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Break in the Waves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Firalla11](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Firalla11/gifts).



Sklonda was mashing her fists together when Fabian came into the Gukgak apartment, and looked anxious to receive him.

“How is he?” Fabian asked, taking his jacket off.

Sklonda grimaced.

“Still at it,” she said quietly. “He ate some noodles earlier, but not much else.”

Sklonda was fiddling with the clasps on her briefcase. She was dressed ready to go night school, where she was training to become a DA — whatever that meant. Fabian had asked the Ball once, but the information never really stuck with him. After all, pirate code was the only kind of law that mattered in his house.

“Will you see if you can get him to just rest? I don’t think he slept last night.”

Fabian nodded and gave her the most reassuring smile he could. She returned it, though it was a bit more watery.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks, Fabian. I owe you.”

He shrugged. It wasn’t exactly a chore to hang out with the Ball.

“There’s some mac and cheese on the stove, by the way,” she said, moving past him to the door. “Help yourself.”

“Thanks, Ms. G.”

“ _Sklonda_ ,” she corrected.

“Thanks, Sklonda,” he said.

When he had gotten to know Sklonda in the summer between their Freshmen and Sophomore year, he’d been freaked out by how familiar she was with him, how she treated him more like a peer than his kid’s best friend (though, at that time, he would have _never_ admitted that the Ball was his best friend). But now, in the summer before their Junior Year? Yeah, he had to admit he liked how relaxed he could be around her. Still, calling her by her first name still sounded clunky in his mouth. He would get used to it. Eventually.

With Sklonda out the door, Fabian started down the hall towards the lounge. Even before he hit the door, he could already sense the Ball’s wired and frantic thinking. In fact, the whole house rattled with the rhythm of his mind.

“Hey, the Ball,” Fabian said. He wandered past the Ball to grab a soda from the fridge. “What’s good?”

“Mmrm,” the Ball replied.

He didn’t even look up from the kitchen table, which was littered with neat piles of notes, and books from the library, and half-scrawled post-its. The Ball was wearing his usual combo of suit and tie and hat, but the shirt was stained with coffee splashes and the tie was all askew.

On his way back from the fridge, he leant over the Ball’s shoulder. His eyes scanned the pages as he reached down and straightened the Ball’s tie. The Ball did not protest, but he did make a small grunt that Fabian decided to interpret as gratitude, whether that was the intention or not.

“Found anything good yet?” Fabian asked. He couldn’t read the scratchy, spidery notes, nor did he care to try and decipher the numbers that the Ball had scribbled down the side of the margins of the book he was reading.

“I think I’m getting somewhere,” the Ball replied. “Just a few more details I need to work out…and I might have cracked exactly what the Night Yorb is.”

“Right,” Fabian said. “All on your own.”

The Ball didn’t reply. He may not have even heard Fabian. When he was in this kind of mode, Fabian knew, he only paid attention to the important details, his brain automatically filtering anything not related to the project out of his mind. Fabian used to be offended by this. Actually, he still sort of was.

He moved away from the table, flopped himself down on the sagging sofa. It still held the groove from where he’d reclined on it the evening before — like mother, like son, neither of them had seemingly relaxed since the day before. As much as Sklonda worried over the Ball, Fabian knew she was dedicated to her work too.

“You’re gonna make yourself sick, the Ball.”

“I’m not sick!” the Ball said. He still wasn’t looking up.

“I didn’t say you were— wait, _are_ you sick?”

“No! It’s just, you know…” He made a gesture that might have been a shrug, but it was hard to tell with his shoulders being so tense.

“What’re your symptoms?” Fabian asked, sitting up.

“I don’t have any. I haven’t slept yet, but it’s just stress.”

“Okay, and that’s too much stress, you crazy goblin,” Fabian said. He shook his head. “Will you take a break?”

The Ball was scribbling something now, head bowed over the desk. Fabian had never written anything as furiously as the Ball was doing. Well, except perhaps eat kippers.

“If I take a break, I’m not working on this,” the Ball said. “And if I’m not working on this, how can I solve the problem?”

Fabian levelled a glare at him, but the Ball hadn’t even looked up from the papers he was now looking through as if in a frenzy. Fabian sighed, stretched out his legs.

“If you won’t stop, will you at least let me help you?” Fabian asked.

“There’s nothing to help with,” the Ball said. He was starting to sound annoyed. “I did this. It’s not your responsibility.”

“The Ball, we talked about this,” Fabian said, his voice low and as kind as he could get it. Adaine had once told him he could be quite patronising when he was trying to be nice and, as much as that had annoyed him at the time, he wanted to avoid any chance of patronisation now. “We’re a team, all of us. This wasn’t your fault. We all took the Night Y—“

“Don’t say his name,” the Ball said quickly, looking up. His eyes were full of panic.

Fabian’s breath caught. He had known the Ball was unholy stressed about the situation. He hadn’t realised that he was _scared_.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Fabian said. He got up, moved to kneel by the Ball’s seat, so they were eye level. He said again, “Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

“It’s not,” the Ball said. His voice was thick. “I can’t believe I put you all in so much danger again…”

“Again?” Fabian said, putting his arms round the Ball. He smelt like stale sweat and coffee and stress.

The Ball’s mouth opened, then closed again, shaking his head. Fabian wanted to press, but decided not to. This was enough for now. He smoothed the Ball’s hair back.

“Come away from there, just for 15 minutes. Will you do that for me?”

His mouth twisted, but then he nodded.

“Okay.”

He wiped his eyes, and walked shakily to the couch.

“Let’s get some food in you.”

They didn’t talk as Fabian heated up the mac and cheese, and ladled it out into two heaping bowlfuls.

“The Ball, none of us blame you for this, you know that, right? We all thought it was some stupid thing. We never thought the Ni— that _he_ was a real thing. I didn’t even listen to the Hangman, did I?”

“I’m the one who got the tattoo, though,” the Ball said, grumpily moving his meal around but not actually eating it. “And I just kept saying it.”

“We all did,” Fabian said. He poked the Ball’s chest, who shimmied away but a small smile crept onto his face. “And the tattoo looks rad.”

“Rad?” the Ball asked, raising an eyebrow.

Fabian rolled his eyes. “I’ve been spending too much time with Fig, haven’t I?”

“With Fig’s mum maybe,” the Ball laughed. “No one says rad anymore, it’s super uncool.”

“My god,” Fabian said. He put a hand on his forehead for dramatic effect. “I’m getting lessons in cool from the Ball? Have I really sunk so low?”

“Hey! I’m cool!”

“Says who?”

“My—“ the Ball looked down, pink creeping onto his green cheeks. “My mum.”

Fabian laughed. “Shut up and eat your mac.”

Fabian looked away as he did so — goblin eating habits didn’t suit his delicate stomach. He ate his at a much more sensible rate, and much quieter and more dignified, too.

“So how about this,” Fabian said, when Riz was finished and his mouth was flecked with cheese sauce. “Instead of killing yourself over this right now, so you’re useless to us when the Night— the _thing we unleashed_ — note that I said _we_ — how about you take the night off, we go to Mordred Manor and hang out with Adaine and Fig and whoever else is there, and tomorrow we start working on this _with their help_? How about it, the Ball?”

“But I—“

“We _need_ you,” Fabian said, this time in earnest. He levelled the Ball with his gaze, not letting him wriggle away from it. “ _I_ need you. And we’re not going to have you if you burn yourself out working on all this research alone.”

The Ball was silent for a moment. Then, with obvious reluctance and maybe a hint of gratitude, he said, “Alright. Adaine probably has some good books for me to borrow, anyway.”

“That’s the spirit! And thank god, otherwise I would have forcefully removed you from your desk to come with me.”

The Ball grimaced. “Would you have really?”

“No,” Fabian said, ruffling the Ball’s hair, mostly because he knew how much the Ball hated it when he did so. “I’ve seen what those goblin claws can do, I’m not exposing myself into them.”

The Ball grinned and seemed to brighten.

“Let me wash up first, so mum doesn’t deal with it after class,” the Ball said.

Fabian frowned, before he realised.

“Sorry, I always forget you don’t have servants,” he sighed. “I really don’t know how you live like this, doing your own dishes…”

“Yes, quite a hardship, to wash two bowls,” the Ball said, chuckling.

“And then, Mordred Manor?”

“And then Mordred Manor,” the Ball said firmly.

Fabian decided, while waiting for the Ball to finish washing up, that if Sophomore was the year in which Fabian grew, Fabian would have to ensure Junior Year was when the Ball grew and realised he wasn’t alone and that someone always had his back when he was afraid. And hell, learn that there was nothing in any dimension that Fabian wouldn’t take on to protect him.


End file.
